


The Skull's Super Joy Division

by Lauralot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nazi Exploitation, Nazis, Nazisploitation, Psychological Torture, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:26:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1489954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A prompt from the Captain America kink meme.  Both Steve and the Winter Soldier discover the Nazisploitation genre, and in particular, a film about them.  They do not take it well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to reiterate, this story will involve mentions of rape and torture, both psychological and physical. I don't plan to go into great detail on these things, but I've listed the story as Explicit just to be safe.

Steve learns quickly not to Google himself.

It is something Tony heckles him about after New York, upon seeing the man flipping through his smart phone, but by then Steve already knows better. The Internet is an amazing tool, both for catching up on all he’s missed while on ice and for witnessing how the world has come to view him in the decades he’s been gone. He’d read newspaper articles about himself back in the day, listened to radio broadcasts and film reels, flipped through the comic books, but there is so much more out there now and seeing the impact he’s left in the twenty-first century is astounding.

There are documentaries, critical essays on his use in wartime propaganda, philosophical papers comparing and contrasting him with Nietzsche’s Übermensch, historical re-enactors for veteran charities, political cartoons, even cookbooks containing recipes for foods he enjoys.

It’s a dozen or so pages into the search results when he happens upon a community of…historical enthusiasts, so to speak. Enthusiasts being an understatement. These are people creating art of Captain America, writing stories about him – some relating to actual events and some not – pouring over his letters, his drawings, and footage that has been preserved, and surmising things about his personality based on those effects. Some stories Steve doesn’t open, the ones that, judging by their summaries, detail amorous fictional encounters of his, usually with Peggy, Bucky, or the other Howling Commandos.

He opens what’s titled a “Shipping Manifesto for Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes,” and realizes a paragraph in that the text has nothing to do with any sort of shipping he’s ever heard of. After Google informs him of an alternate meaning for “shipping,” Steve decides it would be best to stop reading about himself online.

Still, he wouldn’t have expected any trauma to arise from looking at the Captain America IMDB character page.

He’s been the subject of multiple film and television drama adaptations since his disappearance, the most famous being from the seventies and starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. He has no clue who either of those people are, but the SHIELD agent who recommends the film assures Steve that they’re the best.

He scans the rest of the movies listed, pausing at the title of one. _The Skull’s Super Joy Division._

An Italian film, judging from its alternate title. Steve stares. Joy division. Something has to be lost in translation here. There’s no way someone made a film about the Red Skull forming a stalag brothel. No one would be that sick.

Clicking the title to bring up the film’s page is a decision he’s sure to regret, but he can’t keep himself from doing so.

“HYDRA’s dreaded Super Soldier Project, headed by the evil Frauline Skull,” the IMDB summary begins, “seeks to breed the perfect soldier by offering up the most enduring female prisoners to sadistic German officers. The mission changes when Captain America and Bucky Barnes are taken captive, and the Skull realizes the Captain’s ejaculate holds the key to—”

The summary continues below that, but he opts to drop the phone and rush to the bathroom to quietly vomit rather than continue reading. Splashing his face with cold water, Steve shakes his head.

Someone’s made pornography about the horrors Zola and his ilk inflicted on their prisoners. Steve isn’t naïve—behind the times, but not _naïve_ —and he knows in the forties there were Captain America Tijuana bibles circulating, there were Howling Commandos burlesque shows, but this is _different_. He thinks of Bucky strapped to a table away from the other POWs, dazed, agonized, thinks of the tortures that kept his best friend awake at night, the nightmares Bucky had never had a chance to overcome before he’d fallen to his death.

And someone—or rather, an entire film crew—has fetishized that.

He approaches the phone again cautiously, as if it’s a snake that might strike. 

He’s all but praying for this to be a misunderstanding, for some cultural context he’s missing to make this any less horrific.

“Nazisploitation” is listed as a plot keyword, and against his better judgment Steve decides to Google it.

“Nazi exploitation (also Nazisploitation),” begins the Wikipedia summary, “is a subgenre of exploitation film and sexploitation film that involves villainous Nazis committing criminal acts of a sexual nature, often as camp or prison overseers in World War II settings.”

Steve’s fingers clench and the case around the phone snaps.

Later he will realize that romanticizing atrocities isn’t a new development. He’ll think of dime novels about being ravished by pirates or caught behind enemy lines, think of pulp magazines that gleefully described gory horror and torture. But for now, he throws the phone against the wall with enough force to crack both, and leaves the room, heading out to destroy every punching bag SHIELD has on hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I cast Robert Redford as Captain America in a 70s film adaptation. I couldn't think of anyone more fitting. So I guess that means Robert Redford exists in the MCU and the Secretary of Defense just happens to look a lot like him. Young Martin Sheen was my choice for Bucky, if you're curious, closely followed by James Caan and then Anthony Perkins.


	2. Chapter 2

The Winter Soldier likes the face Steve Rogers makes when he finds the Soldier watching porn.

The Soldier had used the Internet very occasionally when he was HYDRA’s, to transmit intel or receive updated information on targets. It isn’t until Steve and Sam Wilson, the one who had wings until the Soldier snapped them, track the asset down and take him to the tower in New York that he realizes how many other things the Internet can do. He imagines they expect him, when the computer voice and Howard Stark’s son explain how the World Wide Web functions, to use it for research purposes.

At first he does. But he isn’t finding much that he hasn’t already learned at the Smithsonian until he turns his attention to the invasion in New York. Among the information he finds there is a torrent for an .avi file entitled “Avengers XXX.” What the XXX designates is unclear to the Soldier.

Upon downloading the file—he feels a brief flash of concern that doing so may cause trouble for Steve before remembering all the illegal things they’ve done between them and deciding that this is the least of their criminal concerns—it becomes clear that this is not a video about SHIELD’s actual Avengers Initiative.

It also becomes clear that whoever choreographs the fight sequences for this film has no combat training.

The Soldier watches, both confused and with an itching in the back of his throat, as if he may laugh, as the highly improbable events unfold onscreen. 

The story revolves around a goddess, Loki, hypnotizing agents through carnal knowledge to aid in bringing about her alien invasion. The Avengers are the only ones who can stop her, but to best function as a group in combat, they apparently need to have sex with each other first, multiple times.

He doesn’t remember HYDRA employing such tactics. It must have been wiped from his mind if they did.

Steve walks in just as the pseudo-Captain America onscreen is thrusting into the pseudo-Black Widow. “Hey, Bucky—” he begins, freezing when he hears the moaning of the audio track. He turns to face the television screen the Soldier has hooked up to the computer and his face is unlike the Soldier has ever seen it before.

He has seen Steve overjoyed, beaming and happy to have his friend back, even if that friend is no longer the same person. He has seen Steve near tears, outraged, seen frustration tense at the man’s face while he tries to hide how much something—usually something the Soldier has done—worries or irritates him. But this look, flushed, eyes wide, mouth gaping, this is new.

It makes the Soldier smile. “He should be bigger,” he says, because the actor is not nearly as broad-shouldered or muscular as Steve, and while he says it to provoke a reaction—there is a name for this, maybe teasing?—he does not expect Steve to sputter and go so red-faced at the words. He finds that he likes it, and wonders if Bucky Barnes ever provoked Steve into stammering this way.

“Bucky, that’s—you shouldn’t—I’ll be back later,” Steve manages before fleeing from the room, and the Soldier laughs.

He wonders if there are other movies of this nature about Captain America, wonders if Steve is aware of them, wonders if he could spring any of them on the unsuspecting man at a later time and get him to make that face again. He finds the thought fun, and fun is a rare enough sensation for him that he feels its infrequent appearances are worth treasuring and hoarding.

His search leads him to a large amount of erotic art, rendered in varying levels of skill, of the Avengers team. There seems to be a disproportionate amount of it specifically displaying Iron Man and Captain America together. He also finds discussion of what appear to be genuine, leaked tapes of Tony Stark having sex, but the computer hurriedly directs him away from them even though from what the Soldier knows of Stark, he’d likely laugh and compliment his own performance.

It does not occur to him to look for anything involving Bucky Barnes until one of the drawings depicts Captain America kissing the man. Kissing him in what appears to be a public location, from what little background there is. The Soldier wonders if these artists understand how homosexuality was viewed in society during World War II.

But more than that, he wonders if there is any sort of World War II XXX film that includes Steve or Barnes among the characters.

One search later, and he has found another torrent, this one for a film titled _The Skull’s Super Joy Division_. He begins the download without a second thought, motivated by curiosity rather than arousal. Curiosity, and the thought of what Steve’s face might do if he sees this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have a moment of levity before Winter sees the exploitation film. He was originally going to see it in this chapter, but then that would have made it double the length of the first, and also a huge piece of mood whiplash.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing the Soldier notes about the film is that none of the HYDRA uniforms are regulation. But then, this is a film which features the Red Skull’s nonexistent, buxom, redheaded daughter trying to breed a super-soldier through torture and eugenics instead of using the early version of Erskine’s serum circulating through the Skull’s veins, so the Soldier imagines historical accuracy was not a high priority.

Captain America and Sergeant Barnes do not appear in the film until over halfway through the proceedings, and the plot up to that point focuses on a female prisoner surviving the various tortures and indignities within the prison camp. The film raises a number of questions, such as why the Red Skull has been replaced by a young woman while Arnim Zola is portrayed by a man of the correct age and similar features to the real doctor. Or why a camp intended to impregnate its prisoners and nurture their offspring would so starve and mistreat the women. Or why all of the female authority figures in this camp seem to be either lesbians or bisexual.

The Soldier is not sure, between the decades of freezing and thawing and the various physical traumas and drugs he has been subjected to, if he is capable of achieving or maintaining arousal. He hasn’t tried, too busy with nightmares and _remembering_ and feeling and autonomy and the world beyond ice to care. This movie, he imagines, is intended to be erotic, because he can imagine no other use for it, but nothing is happening inside him beyond boredom and faint nausea. There are scenes of the prisoners being beaten, humiliated, made to lick the officers’ boots, and that feels like “home,” but besides that he feels apathy.

The apathy fades when Captain America arrives.

The actor looks nothing like Steve—he is much too old and barely blond—and the colors of his shield are arranged incorrectly, but he is here to save the prisoners and that awakens something within the Soldier, a faint memory of being tied down and seeing his best friend above him.

For reasons he cannot comprehend, the Bucky Barnes in the film is female, her hair in a short cut that must reflect the styles at the time of filming, because it is not like that of the real Barnes. She wears a jacket similar to the one on display in the Smithsonian, but with too many buttons and wider sleeves. She is caught by the guards while they are freeing the prisoners, arm wrenched behind her back, gun forced into her mouth, and Captain America surrenders himself to save her life.

The Soldier’s nausea is more than just faint now.

The Skull’s plan is to make the Captain ejaculate, and use the sample to reverse-engineer a super soldier serum. Why the same cannot be done with his blood or saliva is not explained. Apparently, the Captain’s moral fortitude is such that he cannot be made to come, despite the Skull’s methods and tortures, and the Soldier supposes that fortitude must also keep his body from leaking pre-come even though that should be biologically impossible.

His stomach twists, watching this false Captain beaten, cut, molested. He hates the Barnes in the film for her weakness, for getting them caught, and failing to save her superior officer and friend.

Having exhausted all other options, the Skull determines that the only way to break Captain America’s resolve and spirit is to first break Bucky Barnes. She gives this task to Zola—the Soldier is fighting back bile in his throat—as the guards are unable to break Barnes physically. Zola suggests brainwashing via hallucinogens and electrical torture, and the Soldier feels liquid leaking out of his eyes.

They break her. They break her into a million pieces and the Soldier feels the cut from each one as this useless waste of life who is meant to support the Captain is transformed into their complacent little doll, brought out to devastate him without any struggle or question, and his left hand has crushed the remote, grinding plastic shards against metal with horrible scraping sounds that hardly reach his ears.

By the climax of the film, Captain America is watching, hopeless and horrified, as Barnes rides Zola in front of him—the act is performed with Zola lying on an American flag—and the Soldier is weeping, too paralyzed by fleeting, crushing memories and rage to get up and shut the television off, or close the video on the computer.

When Steve returns, the Soldier misses the expression on the man’s face, registering his friend’s presence only when Steve’s fist goes crashing through the screen. Then his arms are around the Soldier, a hand stroking dark, long hair—the Soldier can feel his locks catch on little pieces of glass and circuitry embedded in Steve’s skin—whispering comfort as the asset stares forward, not seeing, not feeling beyond sick and shame and self-disgust.

Stark appears in the doorway, looks as if he’s about to chastise them for smashing his property, but then stares at the pair of them and thinks better of it. Gratitude is not a familiar sensation for the Soldier, but now he feels the strongest sense of it he’s ever had in his life.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony watches—skims—the atrocity because if something’s going to get Captain Boy Scout to go all Hulk Smash on his property, he’d at least like to be aware of what it is in order to best make sure he never inadvertently triggers a memory of it. Or only does so while in the suit and with a damn good reason. He can’t imagine what such a reason would ever be, but if there’s one thing he’s learned—beyond that Pepper’s allergic to strawberries and no one should try to take Thor’s hammer—it’s that life can be damn unpredictable.

Sam Wilson is also of the opinion that they should at least glance over it so they know better what’s kicking around in Barnes’s head, and as Sam and Bruce are the only people Tony trusts with anything remotely therapeutic, he’s inclined to agree.

It isn’t his first brush with the genre, because there comes a time in every red-blooded American teen’s life when he’s stupid and horny enough to think watching _Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS_ is a good idea—probably, possibly—and so he isn’t as taken aback by the exploitation, sleaze, and bad dubbing as he likely ought to be. Still, he can only imagine what must have gone through the mind of someone who lived through the real thing, to see it used for titillation value. Poor titillation value, too, though that wasn’t relevant at the moment.

Tony’s thoughts drift to a cave in the Middle East, a time he tries to forget, and if someone had eroticized that…yeah, the people responsible would have repulsor blasts through all their personal effects in short order.

“I can’t remove it from the Internet,” he announces when Cap returns, followed by his shadow, who is fussing at the bandages on Rogers’s hand with the most concerned expression Barnes can muster. “Well, I could _try_ , but it’d be fruitless. I _can_ whip up a program so anyone who tries uploading or downloading it’ll catch a seriously nasty virus, if you’d like.”

Rogers just shrugs, and if there were any more tension to his jaw, Tony wonders if it wouldn’t snap right off.

“Bucky,” Sam says, and for all Tony can adjust to in the world—gods, green rage monsters, Capsicles—he doubts he’ll ever be able to reconcile such an innocent, upbeat name with the perpetually scowling, horribly tortured individual with the unfortunate but swoon-worthy hair. “How are you?”

“My hand is fine,” Barnes says, and it takes Tony a second to remember the smashed remote shards that hadn’t even left a scratch on the bionic arm. It’s taking him a second to remember anything, he finds, because watching porn of your friends tends to fuck up your ability to interact with them for at least a couple of minutes afterward. Whoever first thought up “sexy Nazis” had better be getting goosesteps to the head in hell. Yeah, their uniforms were designed by Hugo Boss, but that excuse could only take things so far.

“But how are you?” Sam persists, and Tony can’t tell if the pause before Barnes’s next words is out of embarrassment or hesitation, or just an inability to recognize and name his own emotions.

“Weak.”

Steve looks like a wounded puppy and Tony begins to itch, not just because this is all deeply personal, but because for all the weakness he’s felt, he has no idea how to be of help here. He’s not sure there’s any official guide for “How Not to Make Things Worse When a POW Finds Porn Eroticizing Their Torture.” How much of a market for that can there be?

“Panicking when you’re reminded of a traumatic event isn’t weakness,” Sam counters, though he says it softly and in such a way that it doesn’t sound like an argument, or even a counterpoint. He has a way of saying things that makes them indisputable facts. “We all carry our experiences with us, and if it’s unexpectedly sprung on you, then—”

Barnes shakes his head. “No, weak because I let them break me.” His eyes meet Rogers’s. “I let them turn me against you.”

“Bucky.” There’s a tremble in Rogers’s voice and if the American Dream breaks down crying in Stark Tower, Tony’s not sure he’ll be able to handle it. He copes through humor, but there’s a time and a place and this is neither. “You weren’t responsible for what they did.”

“They could never have done it to you,” Barnes says, and his tone makes it clear that, missing memories and trauma aside, he thinks the world of Rogers.

“I never went through what they did to you.” Rogers’s arms are wrapped around his friend, so tight Tony nearly expects to hear the assassin’s back pop. It’d be the sappiest thing in the world if it weren’t so genuine.

“You won’t.” Barnes is so quiet Tony barely hears the words. “That won’t happen. Never.”

The look of admiration and compassion on Cap’s face is so sincere and overwhelming that Tony can feel his blood turn to sugar. Something passes between the pair, some unspoken moment, and when Rogers leads their exit from the room, murmuring softly to his friend, Barnes looks marginally less miserable, which, for Barnes, is a huge leap in progress.

“You think they need a moment in the sunset, or are you heading out after them?” he asks Sam, turning his attention back to the list JARVIS has pulled up of recent computer activity. He’s going to need to add some form of parental controls that can outwit a man who’s mostly machine to keep this from happening a second time. Sam could be useful in compiling possible triggers, but his eyes fall on the recent downloads and Tony decides setting up a personal Net Nanny can wait. “Fair warning, if you stay, I’m about to check out _Avengers XXX._ ”

The sound Sam makes is either a laugh or a disgusted cough, or perhaps a blend of the two. “Seriously?”

“There are some things man was not meant to know. How well a porn star pulls off Tony Stark isn’t one of them. Not for me.”

“You’re fucked in the head,” Sam tells him, but there’s a smile on his face as he makes his way out, and if there’s one thing this household could use more of, it’s smiles.


End file.
